A noted in part 1 I believe the core of any advertising agency differentiation is “it’s about the work.”

But.

Often the agency that is not instantly ‘knowable’ by its work immediately drops down into “our proprietary process” mode (which suggests .. “We can do as good a shit as those Crispin/JWT/GSDM/whomever folk because we have a nifty whizbang process).

Why does everybody go to process? Easy.

As it is ‘all about the work’ here is how it goes:

Is the work smart, insightful, educational, entertaining and effective? No (drop out. Process won’t save you. You don’t belong here in the discussion) Yes. Move on.

Ok. Do you do it consistently? No (you are in trouble. Particularly if you say something like ‘we can but our clients don’t let us.’). Answer Yes? Move on.

Ok. Do you have some formula that guarantees that consistent work? No. we don’t have a process. Its sheer luck of the draw. (okay. Here is why you need a process).

The typical answer here ?

‘Well, yes and no. we don’t have a formula but we do have a consistent process we like to work within that increases the likelihood of success. But, no, there are no guarantees. But our process is pretty good. And we are pretty good. And you are gonna fire our ass if we aren’t successful so we are highly motivated to get it right.”

Ok. But if you are consistent why won’t you guarantee it?

(without getting into compensation discussions)

‘Well, a process is simply a means to an end. It helps uncover true insights and ideas but it only informs us to develop the creative thinking it doesn’t develop the actual creative ideas. “(although it can on occasion but you never tell anyone that).

So.

That is your argument for having a non proprietary solid process. But hanging your hat on your process to differentiate is nuts. It’s your work.

But.

Day in and day out scan advertising agency websites and sit through dozens of credentials presentations and if you have enough coffee to stay awake (which is actually not that tough because most are pretty entertaining and everyone likes to look at ‘the work’ …. Oh … the work?!? … ok … moving on) you will have to endure everyone talking about their process. Their proprietary magic cube that generates the work.

Here is what you want to show.

Okay. And I want to be clear. In this simple process chart there are boundaries but freedom. The lack of detail doesn’t mean that there is not discipline but the freedom is in the simplicity:

A simple “you & I discuss, we take information, we start thinking, we make sure time & costs meet you expectations, we do whatever voodoo we do on that particular assignment that generates work, we show you work.”

But.

Simplicity seems too chaotic. So we decide to show detail:

And then we invest ¾ of a meeting talking about process in the presentation because we either:

(a) feel like we have to discuss each detail point or (b) the audience is so confused they have to ask a zillion questions to figure out what the hell you are showing.

But.

This is the truth. This is really the process chart that reflects a simple truth:

But telling the truth is not good. Because no one wants to trust chaos.

Unfortunately advertising agencies are part chaos (because that is the characteristic of creative thinking) but we pony up a proprietary process to prove consistency and logic and a sense of comfort. Regardless (and this is where I repeat myself) it all ends up with the work. Process is a means to an end.

You look at that last chart (which IS truly what happens in a creative process) and you think chaos. Well. Not really. Let’s call it organized chaos. Or maybe even better said “disciplined chaos.”

First.

I dare you to talk with any creative thinker. Any creative thinker. It need not be an adverting agency person. It could be a scientist seeking a cure for cancer. A NASA engineer seeking a way to build a space ship to leave our galaxy. A product development person seeking an innovative product to meet an unmet need.

Discovery is messy.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t disciplined and have a “way” to attack it.

It is not a process. Or a strict methodology. Because in the end discovery is often about the unexpected or the unintended.

So. What do I mean?

You can attain an awesome unintended result despite a focused articulate smart objective/strategy “aim.”

So if the result doesn’t match the initial objective do you throw the result away?

Gosh.

That means penicillin never happened.

Email never happened (the military discovered it).

That means the atom is ignored.

That means America was never discovered.

People don’t like to hear it but it is exactly the same in advertising and communications.

Discovery is messy.

(sorry about that)

And having a proprietary process may sound good and make you feel good what matters is if your messy discovery creates good ‘output.’

I guess what I am saying is if you are an ad agency and you are investing a lot of emotional and intellectual energy into outlining and developing a whizbang process than I would suggest you are wasting good energy.

But.

With that said.

Say you have your process and you want to differentiate yourself.

Well.

Get to ‘the work.’

Anyway.

Here is my last thought.

Controlling your destiny and differentiation (or being distinct).

You have a whizbang process that looks an awful like everyone else’s but has a nifty name but you have a limited work portfolio. And you want more clients. Bigger clients. But the new potential clients don’t feel comfortable because you just don’t have the ‘work proof’ to get you over the hump.

If I were an agency owner or business development director and I had a budget I would build a soup to nuts beta case study. High risk. High return.

Pick a company any company. Doesn’t matter (although I would imagine if they are really high on your wish list you may as well put ‘em in there). Run them through your process. Get the insight or idea or whatever your process is supposed to generate. Do the work (yes. That is clearly speculative work.) Test it. Show that it “works.” Go back and rework it of it doesn’t work. Get something that works.

There is your proof.

In fact, your process worked so frickin’ well you didn’t even have to have the client there. And when you talk to a client? “Imagine how much better the work would be if a client were involved to provide us with the ‘x’ factor.”

Bundle enough of these and you have test proofed your process, proven you can do the work. Show work that works.

Do large agencies have to do this? Nope. When I was at J Walter Thompson I had so much shit in my bag I could pull out there weren’t enough minutes in a meeting to be able to show examples.

Do agencies who want to get out of group three have to do things like this? Yup.

That is the price of getting out of group three (if you want to get out … because you can make a fine living in group three if you are comfortable there).

There you go.

My rant on advertising agency differentiation parts one and two.

Interestingly I would imagine that while I focused on the advertising industry this applies to many industries where there are massive amounts of commodity like service providers dwelling in some nondescript morass of non differentiated excellence.

Here is some news. It is official. Sylvester doesn’t allow Tweety to talk.

Oh.

And if you are under 25 and use Twitter, you’re not the source of Twitter’s tremendous growth.

Oh my. (that part is me)

So.

Here’s the official graph … kind of makes me feel official putting a chart in my post.

Anyway.

I had suggested in the Sylvester meets Tweety post part 1 that those really smart guys at Harvard kind of already made this point. But we have moved beyond the hallowed halls of an Ivy League institute and received information from the hallowed halls of a research company.

More precisely, Nielsen has compiled data from its NetRatings panel of 250,000 US Internet users and discovered that there are fewer young people on Twitter than on the Internet as a whole: one quarter of US Internet users are under 25, Nielsen says, but only 16% of Twitter users lie in that age range. While Nielsen is only measuring people who visit Twitter.com (not desktop and mobile clients), the analytics firm additionally claims that over 90% of TweetDeck users are over 25, making it unlikely that there are masses of uncounted young people on third-party Twitter apps.

What would a teen say about this (and twitter):

Teen quote:

According to him, it has to do with the Twitter question ‘What are you doing?’

This question leads to people telling about what they are doing instead of engaging in a two-way conversation. In other words: Twitterazi mainly want to broadcast themselves and draw attention to themselves. Conclusion: Twitter is not the ideal tool for conversation, the way MSN is.

Well, bottom line, it kind of appears Twitter is great for content discovery.

That’s because, once you find somebody like you, you leave twitter by inviting them to a different platform to have a real conversation.

Twitter is probably a great place to share (in 140 notes or less) and find, but not to sustain conversations and dialogue.

But. That last point isn’t really the point of this post.

The real point is that we cannot blame teens and tweens on the Twitter phenomenon.

The British clothing chain Primark responding to scathing criticism from politicians and children’s groups has withdrawn its sale of a line of padded bikinis for girls as young as seven. The bikini sets, with a $9 price tag, came in candy pink with gold stars and black with white polka dots.

(oh my)

Primark said, “Every girl wants to look her best and at Primark we make no exception for the younger ladies, all the high fashion trends can be found in our Girlswear section, no matter what age you are.” (double oh my)

Ok.

And what were they thinking?

Ok.

Maybe better said “were they thinking?”

One of the best comments I have ever seen was from opinion buffett who said “Wonder if Speedo will start offering padding for little boys swimwear.”

I admit.

On this one I cannot even envision how the conversation went with regard to not only investing money developing this line of products let alone marketing the products.

I have to assume some relatively smart marketing people said “absolutely. There is a market for this product line.”

I have to assume some product/brand line manager said “the numbers support it. This will round out our store offerings.”

I have to assume some senior management person said “Let’s go for it.”

I have to assume stupid pills were served as snacks in the meeting.

New product innovations are part science, part process, part art and part luck (or maybe better said “nutsy unreasonable slightly lucky vision”).

I have a whole white paper on effective new product innovations process. And I do believe a rigorous process assists in less wasted time on stupid or non profitable ideas. Of course there should be a plan.

But.

Process always runs a parallel path with creativity and some “gut.”

Ok.

Having seen and worked with probably THE best consumer product innovations group in the world (the Proctor & Gamble innovations group) I have seen some of the wackiest ideas up on the white board. But. In the end all the research in the world and all the sales projection numbers in world are balanced against one HUGE constant (not a variable) … common sense.

Seems to me that someone left common sense at home the day they discussed this idea in the office.

So someone pointed out the common sense and they have discontinued the line.

But.

As a UK Democrat congresswoman said, “Primark’s decision is welcome but how on earth could they have thought that this was a good idea in the first place?”

But.

Maybe the scariest thing? some people were buying the product. One mother said “well, she wanted to be like one of the big girls.”

Hey. I am not a parent. But don’t they stop being little girls soon enough as it is?

Twitter, tweeting, whatever … I am not really sure how I feel about it all.

What I do know is I am cynical of all the hype surrounding social media.

Oh. I am not suggesting that the internet and technology has not created additional ways to communicate with each other (of which anyone with half a marketing brain would understand opens up possible avenues to communicate a marketing message) but rather I am cynical of the hype like “twitter is reinventing the way we communicate!”.

I have lived through the .com era, the death of television, cable TV will kill network TV, influencer marketing (or ‘push’ or ‘tipping points’ whatever you want to call it), etc. (I did miss out on the invention of the telegraph which was supposed to kill the newspaper industry).

So.

I have seen buzzwords come and go and “the next big idea” fizzle faster than a shaken coke bottle. Discerning the wheat from the chaff is difficult so I remain realistically cynical … or is it realistically optimistic?

With that said, here is where I am on the Twitter topic, especially with this quasi new study some whiz bang Harvard MBAs did in their free time:

By the way. I had no interest in writing about Twitter, but this post actually started with my 78 year old mother. I had lent her my 2 foot high ceramic Sylvester the Cat (which holds Tweety behind him) to put at her front door of her new home (she dresses Sylvester up depending on the holiday). Anyway. As we left the other day she asks what this “tweety thing” is she keeps hearing about. She also added “it sounds like a very narcissistic thing.” (she’s a smart lady)

Anyway.

Just to be sure I have everyone on the same page let me outline what I believe Twitter is all about (defining it):

Twitter is a “micro blogging” service, where you can stand on your soapbox and say whatever you like in 140 characters or less. Each message is called a “tweet”. When you tweet (god that sounds stupid) it goes out to the Internet in general, but particularly to your “followers” (some boneheads who identified some interest in hearing what you have to say).

If you don’t feel like ‘tweeting’, you can just lurk in the background and eavesdrop on whomever you want. The good news is you don’t need to use your real information as your username, so you don’t have to worry about people finding out your personal information.

Oh.

About these ‘followers.’

If this whole havingfollowers thing sounds like a bit of an ego stroke, um, it is.

Anyway.

Twitter is great for both people who like to yak in 140 characters or less a lot and those who like to listen to them (and not have to read a lot).

Next.

This research study I referred to. There was a nice research study completed by a couple of MBAs at Harvard (and published in the Harvard Business Review). Here is the deal on this study. The study gets nitpicked by social media experts for methodology and a bunch of crap. Everyone should get over it and learn from the information.

Researching a new growing tactic or category is difficult because it is moving so fast. So this study is at best an excellent snapshot of Twitter.

The study suggests at this stage in Twitter’s “life,” some usage patterns vary from a typical on-line social network. Here is some information from the study (some things I just cut & pasted):

A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. (yikes. Anything smaller than that would be … well .. zero). This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.

The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one way monologue (or one to many) service than a two way, peer-to-peer communication network. (they, or someone else, wrote this not me…but…I have been trying to suggest this for a long, long time)

The Study: By comparing activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to activity on other social networks and online content production venues, they concluded “Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets”. (some more detail follow below in this point)

Of the sample, 80% are followed by or follow at least one user. By comparison, only 60 to 65% of other online social networks’ members had at least one friend (when these networks were at a similar level of development). This suggests that actual users (as opposed to the media at large) understand how Twitter works.

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships. In case you are wondering they found that men comprise 45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. (they got that figure by cross referencing users’ “real names” against a database of 40,000 strongly gendered names).

An average man tweeter (I do love typing that) is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different tweeting activity because both men and women tweet at the same rate.

The information shows the split between lurkers and contributors to be quite close to that of many other computer based communities, which almost always exhibit strong participation inequality, with a 90-9-1 distribution (90% of users hardly contribute and are lurkers; 9% contribute some; 1% dominate the contributions). However, the results pertaining to women/men are contrary to other research on the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women (men typically follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know.) In other words, in a non Twitter social media environment men typically receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women.

I would imagine this difference gets driven by the 140 character limit and a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.). So. Twitter seems to me a broadcasting system which appeals to those seeking attention for whatever reason.

Some thoughts (from me):

While the research seems to be puzzling social media experts, a lot of it seems kind of common sense to a dinosaur like me.

Women, in general, are more discerning in relationship and communication. I just don’t find this surprising. I tend to believe women have tighter restrictions on building reciprocating type relationships (especially in a non face to face environment like Twitter). Not only would I assume women are less likely to do a ‘reciprocal follow’ just because someone chooses to follow them because of simple caution, but also I believe they prefer a few quality relationships rather than a high quantity of lower quality relationships.

I also don’t find it difficult to believe men are more interested in follower size than women. Look. Men are known for having bigger ego’s than women and Twitter lets them ‘hold court’ and have ‘followers.’

Facebook is much more popular with women because in general it fits some user needs – post pictures and extended information about personal relationships. Men, in general, don’t care about that stuff.

But. This is really bad news for all those social media experts who thrive on “conversations” and “dialogue” and whatever buzzword you want to throw in here. Twitter is currently a place where a few sources with a large readership dominate the information flow on a topic. (some people call that ESPN or CNN) I guess in general we could call the current Twitter a broadcasting system.

Regardless of all the lurkers, followers, shouters and random free agents from a business marketing perspective, (and let’s try and remember Twitter was designed as a social platform, not a sales or marketing platform, so we are the “uninvited guest to the party”) the early social media success stories happened because they were both unexpected and real. I mean most people were pretty shocked that the person tweeting as “Zappos CEO Tony” really was the actual CEO of Zappos, The fact that this CEO was actually funny and had real personality only added to the mystique (and screwed every other CEO in the world).

Unfortunately for most companies they just don’t have a cool, funny CEO who wants and can twitter. In addition, companies don’t really know how to have actual conversations (or their legal departments won’t let them) so they resort to one of two things (1) professional PR people twittering professional gobbledygook or (2) mass fake party banter (“Great! See you there!”) or the ‘pitch’ (“new sale on pink thongs!”) and the interactions become painfully sterile.

In the end.

As much as we like wasting time on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, most of us just don’t have time to interact with every single brand who is “shouting out” to us especially if we’re mainly there to interact with our friends (or our worshipping followers).

As for marketers?

It is probably a great one way “hey pay attention here is some news” vehicle but an inappropriate vehicle because it is used, and perceived, as a social vehicle and not a media vehicle.

My neighbor, who has a great mutt named Josie, was telling me about a Pedigree commercial she thought I would like.

Oh.

I typically dislike pet food advertising because I think most of it is fairly unoriginal and “cute” <I CANNOT believe I just typed that word> and rarely actually gives me a reason to buy their stuff.

I do think IAMS does a nice job talking about some of the functional reasons to purchase, and I loved the Snausages execution <the one where the dog yells “snausages”> because I could just envision my dog doing the same <note: it didn’t really compel me to buy Snausages but I thought the commercial was hysterical>.

Anyway.

The Pedigree ads.

I cruised onto Youtube and checked them out (because apparently I don’t watch TV shows with high dog viewership because I haven’t seen any of this crap). Before I get to the ones that she told me about I do want to point out one Australia version of a Pedigree ad which I really liked. I think it is an older campaign and the use of an Aussie voice (which could calmly tell you that you were fat, dumb and ugly … and you would still smile) may bias me but I thought it was nice.

I thought it was simple with a straightforward message and a little twist that made it clear they understood dogs:

Ok.

Onto the ‘slow mo’ Pedigree campaign. Beautifully shot and produced. Well crafted. Not sure it will sell one damn bag of dog food.

Oops.

That was the cynical-advertising-business-side of me speaking.

Ok. Ok.

With one exception.

The introductory “now available” version I thought clearly made me want to pay attention to the words and the footage is really nice:

This next version I am sure is the one TBWA has on their agency reel and probably has never aired on one television show (its 2 minutes long). And it seems to go too long, but once again fun to watch and it has beautiful footage and I hope they never pay to air it because I don’t think it will sell one bag of dog food.

So.

I figured after pounding on the 2 minute version I should probably share the one that is probably on television right now. I don’t really have anything new to say other than the fact I have been on a production where we had a dog jump and grab something and it is a pain to shoot and shoot well but if you get it right (like TBWA did) it is a really cool little vignette in the bigger scheme of the commercial.

Lastly.

Now.

I love the filming of the commercials and I absolutely love the introductory commercial (mostly because it is well done and unabashedly an introductory message). I would also like to note I am an admirer of TBWA who did this campaign (Toronto office I believe), however, the campaign is kind of a rip off of a video done by Pleix films in about 2006. But, hey, great ideas can happen everywhere and copying is the truest form of flattery (although I seriously doubt they knew they were copying).

Now, that is just a short film done for creativity’s sake and isn’t selling anything but the production capabilities of the group who created it, but it is a fun very well done video particularly if you like dogs.

That’s it.

My neighbor got me thinking about it and I love dogs so I thought what the heck…write about it.